Abstract
Theories, categorizations, and representations of death encompass medicine, biotechnologies, psychology, ethics and metaphysics, religion, and the law. In utopia as a genre, the end of life is at the intersection between the givenness of reality and the openness of an imagined elsewhere where human beings can be perfected. However, perfectibility clashes with ontological finitude. As the vision of an alternative society cannot overcome the finite nature of human life, utopian thinkers seek to mitigate, neutralize, or ignore the human limit par excellence. Knowing that death cannot be eluded, they seek to neutralize its inevitability. While finitude poses an insuperable challenge, institutionalized death is questioned, fear is rationalized, and mourning is regulated. Death in utopia generates a sustained reflection on end-of-life decisions and codification of funerary practices.
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Spinozzi, P. (2022). Death. In: Marks, P., Wagner-Lawlor, J.A., Vieira, F. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88654-7_55
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